Sunday, February 22, 2015

Posted by Lauryn N, Krasnopolsky,
Morgan A. Yocum, and James N. Maples, RICHMOND, KENTUCKY -- In August 2013,
Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) President Michael Benson announced several
campus improvement projects designed to enhance what is known as The Campus Beautiful. The Campus
Beautiful is a term used since 1917 to describe EKU’s breathtaking architecture
and landscaping while building a strong sense of place attachment between the
campus and the community, faculty, and student body. President Benson’s projects
included a new pedestrian entrance way that will replace Combs Residence Hall.
Combs (as it is called by EKU students) was located along a busy and highly
visual stretch of Lancaster Avenue leading to downtown Richmond. Combs has been
home to over 50 graduating classes of EKU students, each generation with
memories of this place. In his official announcement of the improvements,
President Benson stated that:

“We have talked about the three P’s of people, programs and place. A sense of place and making our campus even more beautiful and welcoming is a significant part of the educational enterprise. The way we present ourselves says a great deal about how we feel toward this institution and our daily work as stewards of the University.”

The authors of this article fully
support President Benson’s proposal and appreciate the recent renovations to our
shared Campus Beautiful. As sociological thinkers, however, we do note the renovations
as an interesting tension between two competing definitions of place: place as
experienced by EKU students living in Combs Residence Hall and place as
experienced by the university in the form of The Campus Beautiful.

Source: Keila Bender

Originally
named Earle Combs Hall (after New York Yankees baseball player and 1919 EKU
graduate, Earle B. Combs), Combs Residence Hall first functioned as a female
residence hall for 242 residents. President Robert R. Martin had Combs built in
response to a rapid period of growth at EKU.Combs later became a men’s dorm (aptly called Men’s Dorm #3) before
transitioning to a co-ed residence.It
was renovated twice to update its technology and infrastructure, first in 1984,
and again in 2004 before being slated for demolition in 2013. Active demolition
of the building began on October 6, 2014, and concluded around December 1,
2014. A Twitter account (twitter.com/EKUBuilds) followed the progressive
demolition of the building while creating excitement about many other
renovations occurring on campus.

Exploring
the strain between destroying the old to build the new is an important part of
understanding the differences between place and space. Place indicates emotional attachment and meaningful connection
between a specific location and individual memories and experiences. Places are
intimate locations: the place where one receives their first kiss or the place
on the interstate where a family member dies. A place is familiar to our minds.
It becomes a landmark in our mental map of reality. For example, students may
find that only a small portion of campus really enters into their daily lives,
such as the dorm and their major’s office building. Likewise, place is often
visible or, if absent, somehow marked or interpreted as being present in the
subject’s mind.

In
comparison, student life (particularly for freshmen) initially revolves around spaces: mundane, often unnoticed
locations that are merely physical objects that may (or may not) require
interaction. Unlike place, space is decidedly mundane in that it has no
emotional meaning. In a student’s daily activities, it is unlikely she will initially
attach special meanings to classrooms, auditoriums, and the sidewalks that lead
to both locations. This happens with good reason. Our minds are somewhat
selective in creating places because of the maintenance it takes to keep up
with them.

Dorm
rooms are an excellent example of the transition from space to place. Geographer
Tim Cresswell (2004) envisions space as the potential for growth, providing the
relevant example of a dorm room as a place in transition. The first time a
student sees an empty dorm room, it is space to be filled: empty closet,
un-draped windows, uninhabited desk, and vacant floor square footage. Upon
closer inspection, it will be evident that previous students have lived in this
space: names carved into desks, painted-over patches of nicked plaster, or
perhaps a coffee stain on the carpet. Moreover, the student will build her own
memories in this space, transforming it into place filled with meaning and
attachment. As a student resides in this place, memories build upon memories,
and these memories remain even as the student graduates as a senior and moves
on to whatever comes next. In this sense, place is certainly left open to
revision as one definition of place becomes separated from the physical place. Even
as place retains present in memory, place can transition back into space for
others, or be altered by a competing sense of place.

A
critical issue in the discussion place is that place is not the same for
everyone, leading to several scholars thinking about the competition over place.
For example, James Maples and Lisa East’s (2013) work on historic mountain
cemeteries shows that one person’s definition of a family cemetery is another’s
definition of a potential coal mine operation site. Derek Alderman (2010)
similarly examined how places (such as the assassination site of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.) can be revised and controlled by groups to create a singular
historical focal point. Alderman notes the importance of power in making this
decision, an idea also echoed in Stephen Legg’s (2005) work on place as a
political resource. Wanda Rushing (2009) considered how the meaning of place
can be adapted through local and national policies as well as power structures
such as local government and local elite. Rushing provides the example of Beale
Street in Memphis, a historical place physically destroyed in order to create a
new sense of place that is easier to commoditize compared to its earlier,
grittier definition of place. Likewise, Ruben Rose-Redwood (2008) notes that
competition over the definition of place can even come internally from the same
group (such as the case at EKU), leading to two perspectives on the meaning of
place that conflict.

Prior to its demolition, Combs
Hall was truly stuck in this intriguing competition between two places. From
The Campus Beautiful perspective, razing Combs Hall represented the potential
to unify the campus design by creating a grand entrance and a community park
space along a busy street.Yet from a
student’s perspective (specifically a student who identifies Combs as place), the building is filled with
memories that shaped individual lives over a lifetime. Those memories have now
been swallowed by the competing sense of place embedded in The Campus
Beautiful. We again return to Cresswell’s work here: in the competition between
places, Combs is reduced to space which, in turn, creates the potential for a
new sense of place to develop.

Today,
Combs Hall is physically lost as a
place, and The Campus Beautiful persists
in its stead. Combs now transitions into the work of Maples and East (2013) and
Rose-Redwood (2008) in arguing whether or not Combs Hall, as a place, can
survive the absence of a physical place and remain only in memory. Tim Edensor
(2005) argues that this is possible; so-called ghosts of public memories
(including Combs Hall) can remain attached to the site so long as they can be
institutionalized within a spatial narrative. This could be as simple as a
commemoration plank or line on a campus historical tour. Will this be the same
to students who shared some of their happy memories at Combs, or EKU alumni
returning to campus for homecoming only to find Combs gone? Not necessarily,
but place can persist even beyond physical loss. In this sense, it is only time
and policy decisions which will tell what comes next for Combs.

Lauryn
N, Krasnopolsky and Morgan A. Yocum are Sociology majorws at EKU. James N.
Maples is an Assistant Professor in EKU’s Sociology Department. Corresponding
author is Lauryn Krasnopolsky at lauryn_krasnopols@mymail.eku.edu.

I'm not sure I can ever go back to any other place, after an experience like this. This gallery space for rent NYC is appropriate in a space that lends so much gravitas to events. The design is sharp and environment is unbelievably good.

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